* It seems that a lot of small businesses still only partially get the Internet
We are refurbishing our kitchen. This may sound like an unlikely opening for a newsletter on Web applications but bear with me …
When you undertake such a project you are in for hell. Dust everywhere, chaos rampant, and trying to coordinate the various moving parts is a job for a committed masochist. But those trials and tribulations are as nothing to the effort of trying not to get ripped off for the various services and components you need and trying to find the answers to what should be relatively simple questions about the components you plan to use.
Now there is no doubt that the Web has made it orders of magnitude easier to source things like fixtures and fittings (on eBay I just found a couple of 15 gauge stainless steel sinks for the price of a single 16 gauge sink from my local plumbing emporium). But the one thing that the Web has only slightly improved is access to the data for these items.
You’ll find that data on things such as sinks are easily found while data on more complex products can be non-existent. It seems that a lot of small businesses still only partially get the Internet – they make a gesture towards providing the kind of data and information needed but often take an incredible amount of time to update their online presence to match their current products and services.
I have two examples of this problem. First is American Range. They make excellent commercial ranges with a tremendous selection of options and configurations (they also do a consumer line but who wants products that cost three times as much and put out one third of the heat?).
I purchased a 60” commercial range with six burners and a 24” griddle and I needed to know the position of the gas inlet. To get a drawing of the product you have to go to a dealer and get a product sheet and even then the back of the range isn’t detailed (the side elevation shows the inlet height but not its position across the width). Why not put these details online? Why not provide CAD files so that consumers can use them in programs such as Google SketchUp and Microsoft Visio?
My second example is Waterstone, which make perhaps the greatest kitchen faucet I have ever seen (think steampunk meets Scandinavian design aesthetic). Unfortunately I can’t point you to it because despite it being in stores it isn’t online yet!
The point of my rant is that ignoring the online world is no longer feasible. Just think, if I could have pointed you to the Waterstone faucet I’ve been raving about how much more exposure they would have had! (All right, perhaps I wouldn’t have written about them if they were online as there would be nothing WebApp-ish to talk about, but you get my point.)
In my perambulations around the Web for my kitchen refurb I’ve come up with a few rules that I wish these kinds of companies would follow:
1. Keep your Web site current. You produce marketing materials, so why not generate Web site content at the same time? Every product that exists in the real world should be on your site. With drawings.
2. Learn to e-mail. When a customer phones you be ready to send your literature via e-mail rather than – the gods help us – fax.
3. Make finding a dealer really easy. Use a cookie so that the next time the user, having identified his area, returns you can direct him to the dealers in his area. He and they will thank you.
4. Don’t make pricing a mystery. Whatever you charge will become known anyway if your company is of any consequence.
5. Use a sensible domain name. A company I wanted a quote from had acquired a domain name in the .bz (that’s for Belize) Top Level Domain apparently thinking it was for business (what they really wanted was the .biz TLD). Here are the TLDs in descending order of desirability for small businesses: .com; .biz; and .us. And don’t contract your name unless it is ridiculously long.
You can ignore this advice and for perhaps two years it won’t much matter, and then suddenly, it will. You don’t want to have to race to catch up. And if you have one of the products I need for my new kitchen, you have no time to waste – I’m on a schedule!
